By Michaela Gordoni
Discord is slowing down its new age verification update after it received numerous user complaints.
Earlier this month, it announced an update that would require video selfies to determine a user’s age. Users could also submit their IDs to vendor partners. It was supposed to roll out next month, NBC News reported Wednesday.
The plan was to give teens a more “teen-appropriate” experience that had updated communication settings, content filtering and restricted access to adult spaces.
Discord users weren’t happy.
Related: Is Discord’s New Face Scan and ID Verification Safe?
Many pointed out that a third-party partner had a security breach in October, and over 70,000 users’ IDs and personal details were leaked. On top of that, last month, Discord ran a trial with a vendor — Persona — which purportedly shared users’ data with other companies and left thousands of file codes exposed on the internet, Mashable reported.
According to Destructoid, upset Discord users left the platform, flooding into a similar startup called Stoat — so much so that the app crashed from the overload of users. The company said, “There’s simply too many people” trying to log in and register accounts all at the same time, and ‘We’re trying our best.”
Discord chief technology officer Stanislav Vishnevskiy wrote in a Wednesday blog post, “Let me be upfront: we knew this rollout was going to be controversial. Any time you introduce something that touches identity and verification, people are going to have strong feelings. Rightfully so. In hindsight, we should have provided more detail about our intentions and how the process works.”
The rollout is now delayed until the second half of 2026. The CTO said Discord won’t require face scans and ID uploads from everyone, and over 90% users won’t ever need to verify their age on the platform.
“If you’re among the less than 10% of users who do need to verify, we’ll give you options, designed to tell us only your age and never your identity,” Vishnevskiy said.
If someone chooses not to verify their age, they can still keep their account and chat access but cannot access age-restricted content or change safety settings.
Vishnevskiy stated Discord no longer works with the vendors that had the security breaches.
“We’ve made mistakes. I won’t pretend we haven’t. And I know that being a bigger company now means our mistakes have bigger consequences and erode trust faster,” the CTO said.
I don’t expect one blog post to fix that,” Vishnevskiy added.
“We’re listening. We’ll get this right. And when we ship, you’ll be able to see for yourselves,” he said.
Hopefully Discord can get this figured out. No one can fault them for trying to protect teens on the platform.
Read Next: Discord Rolls Out New Parent Controls, But Is It Enough to Keep Kids Safe?
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